Modern Cheat Sheet

Modern is a massive format. Despite Jund's results, there are a huge number of high tier decks and even more fringe decks to consider. For someone new to the format looking to play in the upcoming Grand Prix Toronto or PTQ Dragon's Maze season, it can be quite daunting.

Here is your cheat sheet to the big decks of the format.

Midrange ("Fair" Decks)

These decks all aim to use interaction to prevent their opponent from doing dangerous things while applying pressure with a selection of efficient creatures.

The three important characteristics of decks in Modern are power, redundancy, and resilience, and Jund has all three in spades. Yes, it is a midrange deck, but you have none of the midrange problems. You have nut draws unlike most past midrange decks, especially given Deathrite Shaman ramping into turn 2 Liliana of the Veil and turn 3 Bloodbraid Elf. Your answers are very broad and not prone to clunking up hands, your threats are almost universally good, and even your lands kill them. Beyond that, your deck is good because your cards are good, not due to any specific synergy that can be disrupted.

The deck is just good. The cards are just good. It's not the kind of thing that can be hated out. There's a reason the deck won the Player's Championship, got second at the Pro Tour, and won the two Grand Prix since then.

Jund mirrors are still 50/50. If you feel your deck is better against the expected field than Jund and still even against Bloodbraid Elf, you can justify playing that.

To really get an edge, you are going to need to meta with Jund for Lingering Souls and the reaction to it. Just playing last week's list might get you to Day 2, maybe even money, but you will have issues going deep into the event against people whose lists are tuned for yours. If you don't feel comfortable with this process, playing another deck that has a lot more riding on raw power than specifics of opponents' decks is reasonable.

Jund is quite play-draw dependent in a lot of matchups, namely those involving mana creatures and one-drops. Turn 2 Liliana on the play is unbeatable; on the draw, they can easily have established to the point their Noble Hierarch is irrelevant. On the play, you can end step Bolt their mana guy into a two-drop; on the draw, they can just make their turn 2 play and leave you in the position of answering it or tapping out to cast yours and hoping to not fall behind. This isn't to say you can't win on the draw and that it isn't already a huge issue for other decks, but it is worth considering as a source of variance.

Changes to Make

I've heard of Zealous Persecution as a potential sideboard card to win the Lingering Souls fight in the mirror, kill Dark Confidant, and just generally be good elsewhere. That said, I haven't played much with the deck so I can't confirm that the card is actually castable given this mana base or even good enough given Tarmogoyf also being a huge factor in the matchup.

Sideboard

Why You Should Play U/W Midrange

This is one of the few decks that really dominates the pure combo decks. Even Jund is still pretty much a coin flip against Splinter Twin as they rip out of scenarios a lot, but this deck is stacked with answers. All of the pure combo decks have major issues with U/W.

The deck also lets you play a fairly reactive game. Your opponent has to come to you, which is always a very powerful advantage.

Why You Shouldn't Play U/W Midrange

You have big issues with most of the "engine" decks. Tron and Scapeshift out-mana you by a large margin, and Affinity has a lot of hard to answer threats as well as manlands that dodge Tectonic Edge since they just don't play a fourth land.

Your deck also has a lot of midrange issues. Despite how much it looks like a hybrid control deck (TM Adrian Sullivan), you don't have good early threats to apply pressure. Blade Splicer is no Stoneforge Mystic or Bitterblossom. As a result, your answers are often pressed early on to match up perfectly with their threats. Sound similar to previous discussions of why midrange is bad?

The deck requires tight play. You need to eke value out of all of your cards because you have minimal card selection and pure card draw. Sometimes the 1/1 on Blade Splicer isn't worth a fraction of a card, or the 2/1 on Snapcaster isn't, or even the land they get off Path to Exile matters enough that you are actually down a card on the exchange. Regardless, you need to play in a way such that even if something like this happens, you are still ahead on attrition. Emanuel Sutor likes to compare this deck to Faeries, but that deck had Bitterblossom to ride to an incremental advantage. This deck at best has Restoration Angel plus Blade Splicer, which is very dissimilar.

This deck is also slightly on the wrong side of the Deathrite Shaman war due to Snapcaster Mage. To be fair, you take the opposite side with Rest in Peace post-board to beat their Tarmogoyfs and weaken their Deathrites and three-drops with flashback/undying/persist, but it's still a concession you are making against some decks to have a phenomenal card elsewhere.

Changes to Make

More Baneslayer Angel. More Cryptic Command. The metagame appears to be moving towards fair decks.

Less Vendilion Clique, but only a little less. Lingering Souls wins the fight against a 3/1 quite well.

The Takeaway

U/W does a lot of important things in the format in terms of controlling combo.

G/W Little Kid

Why You Should Play G/W Little Kid

You have great answers to Lingering Souls fights (your own plus a Liege or Township) and all the combo hate you could ever want.

Thoughtseize, despite being awesome in general, is quite bad against you. Liliana also can almost never +1 without you punishing them with a free 4/4.

Why You Shouldn't Play G/W Little Kid

You have a lot of hate bears. In the fair deck mirror, this is quite a liability. Qasali Pridemage is embarrassed by every creature in U/W or Jund. If they just manage your important creatures properly, they often end up ahead on board presence.

Despite all the discard hate, the deck is still just close against Jund. Worth noting is that if your opponent plays Liliana correctly, the card is still awesome against you. If the Jund player just refuses to +1 until they can handle a potential Liege or Smiter, they get a 1BB Edict that either forces you to attack it and gain them life or Edicts you again later. If you put a Smiter or Liege in and they kill it, it's like they got to Spellshape their worst card into another Edict. It's not pure card advantage and Lingering Souls can mitigate it, but you are still a creature deck they want to spam removal against and Liliana does that.

Changes to Make

Still, I want to maindeck Etched Champion. No idea how, but it's very good.

Also, the best maindeck removal spell for Thoughtcast lists may be Dispatch. Unlike Galvanic Blast, the benefit of it being in your deck is not diluted by playing less than the full set. It also kills Tarmogoyf and Baneslayer Angel.

The Takeaway

Affinity is still a strong deck, but it definitely got worse from the metagame shift to Spirit Tokens.

When Birthing Pod is active, this is the best deck in the format. Not only are there a ton of configurations that they immediately die from, but you can always choose to not move all in and set up the combo with protection instead.

When you don't have the namesake card in play, things get a little scrappy. You can either be a bad Splinter Twin deck or a really awkward midrange beatdown deck.

You are pretty reliant on mana creatures to boost into your four- and five-drops. This is sometimes an issue if your opponent can create tempo-relevant ways to remove them, such as turn 2 Liliana on the play.

Your life total is an important resource due to the Phyrexian activation cost on Pod. Decks like Burn and Zoo can capitalize on this, so you need to be very careful in those matchups.

Changes to Make

I would play Izzet Staticaster as a way to handle Lingering Souls tokens and other assorted problem cards as a Tutor target, but quite frankly the number of options is too large to discuss and not even something I've analyzed fully.

The Takeaway

If you play Pod, you should do extensive research on what options you have for each slot as well as understand all the chains you have access to with an active Pod.

If you play against Pod, know the most common options but be ready for everything. They may even be playing Melira Pod, which trades power for a bit more reliable backup plan.

If you are sideboarding for Pod, you want answers for their Pod but can't overload on them as their plan B of scrappy beats/combo will punish you.

Pure Combo ("Unfair" Decks)

These decks all aim to kill their opponents in linear fashions, bashing head first through disruption or using light countermeasures of their own to shirk it.

Sideboard

When Twin works, it just kills you. It has a ton of backup for the combo, a solid amount of redundancy, and a fast clock.

Eight of Twin's combo pieces are also interaction. The trigger on Pestermite or Deceiver Exarch can drastically slow a clock or tap an important land on your opponent's end step to pull a removal spell, letting you cast another copy and then combo out a turn later.

Twin mulligans a lot to find reasonable hands, and it mulligans out of games more often than some people feel comfortable with. It also mulligans into a lot of hands where you just have to go for it and assume they don't have it because the deck has only minimal ability to dig for a backup spell if it doesn't have one in a relevant time frame.

This also means some matchups often are just unwinnable based on their hand. Namely, U/W Midrange often has too much removal for you to beat along with instant speed clocks.

Changes to Make

One Dispel is not correct. Yes, it does not counter Abrupt Decay, but it still counters every other removal spell. Spell Pierce is only good against discard when on the play.

More Kiki-Jikis. I can't justify less than three, but the fourth is a legitimate debate as the card can be clunky.

Sideboard

Why You Should Play Storm

The vast majority of the time you untap with a Goblin Electromancer, the game ends. Often you can cast it midcombo as a pseudo Ritual.

As a result of this, Storm is tied with Infect for fastest combo deck in the format. Killing on turn 3 automatically outraces all of the engine decks as well as many of the other combo decks.

Why You Shouldn't Play Storm

Storm has almost no interaction. None of the discard effects or Orim's Chants associated with the Legacy lists. At best, you have Grapeshot to gun down Blighted Agents or bounce spells for post-board hate cards. Game 1, hate colds you. Post-board, hate plus a counterspell is often enough. Mainboard counterspells you have to play straight through, which is awkward when there is also a clock associated with them.

Goblin Electromancer also makes removal live against your otherwise all-spell combo deck. Giving people more ways to interact is not what combo decks want to do.

Merfolk is very powerful against decks with Islands but not so much against Jund's mass of removal. I wouldn't be completely shocked to see it deep in the event, but I wouldn't expect it.

Honor of the Pure decks, namely Tokens and Martyr, are always lightly represented. They are the best at using Lingering Souls and tend to roll fair decks, but at the same time that means they will take a lot of splash hate from people reacting to Jund.

BUG Control had a big finish at Grand Prix Lyon but faded away. It is potentially a better U/W Midrange deck due to Deathrite Shaman, but does the black really address any of the issues the deck currently has? Maybe if you could play Shaman to ramp out a Geist of Saint Traft you could get somewhere on the early threat issue.

Burn is something people do. Not much to say beyond that. Deathrite Shaman is a bit of an issue, but it drove Kitchen Finks out of the metagame which helps.

Gifts Control is awesome in a lot of ways, but I can't imagine trying to Gifts pile through a Deathrite Shaman.

I make no promises this won't change drastically over the course of the upcoming Modern season, but this is a good resource to start with. The number of options is massive, but the information to make the right choice is also there.

About Ari Lax

Ari Lax started playing competitive Magic in the Junior Super Series and has accumulated seven Grand Prix top eights, a Grand Prix win, and a Pro Tour championship in the years since. Despite a known preference for combo decks, he approaches the game in methodical fashion, always looking for decks that play better than he does and make winning easy.